2007/08/31

I've been busy lately. It all started over a month ago when I went to Nagano to teach for 4 days. I had a great time but it was a lot of work. The man who hired me put me up in his guest room and his wife fed me three big healthy and delicious meals a day. I taught three groups: 2nd grade (with some 1st graders), 5th grade and 4 old ladies (one of them not so old). This ran about 6 hours a day in 2-2.5 hour classes. It was exhausting, but rewarding at the same time.

The day after getting back from Nagano, I flew to Amsterdam. This is the view from the hotel room:

We walked around a lot and I noticed that Amsterdam is the dirtiest city I've ever seen. There are good reasons for this, like the huge amount of tourists, but that doesn't change the fact that I would never want to live there. I guess it falls in the same catagory as London and New York for me.

We stopped to brake our fast at a nice little place with some omelets on toast and some delicious coffee.This is just a random picture of scenery around a canal. The canal systems were all planned and built a long time ago. There are four main arcs and some parallel canals that were built like a giant windshield wiper from one side to the other. The four main arcs all lead to the bigger body of water.We toured the Heineken museum and had quite a few beers. I'm not the biggest fan of Heine but after the first two they start getting better and better. This brewery wasn't in use very long because Amsterdam expanded quickly after it was built and it was too hard to get trucks to and from it.Cheers.

We saw other museums like the Rijk's Museum and the Van Gogh Museum. I liked the Rijk's Musuem but I'm not a huge fan of Van Gogh. I enjoy looking at old books and music, artifacts and some styles of paintings. I like Rembrandt and the Rijk's had quite a bit. After Amsterdam we went to Bremin, Germany. I decided not to come back to Amsterdam for the last leg of my trip because it was so expensive and dirty.